


Wildflowers

by misura



Category: Caprica (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 08:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5410283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Third date, and already breaking out the flowers? He might as well start wearing a shirt saying 'So Yeah, I May Be Totally Badass, But I Can Never Score With Guys And Also, I Am Not As Traditional As You Want Your Future Son in Law to Be'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wildflowers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Plaid_Slytherin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Plaid_Slytherin/gifts).



> until I read your letter, I had no idea how many Sam feelings I had, so thank you rekindling my love for this guy and his family <3
> 
> ... not that his family even shows up in this fic, aside from in that anecdote which I knew I had to write about when it came up in canon, but, well, that's what the second present is for. or uh the first if you read that one before 'opening' this one. um.
> 
> THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME ALL THE SAM FEELINGS AGAIN!

"You shouldn't have," Larry said. He accepted the flowers all the same, but the expression on his face was just the tiniest bit off, like he wasn't entirely comfortable with how this was going.

"I know," Sam said. Frak, did he know. Third date, and already breaking out the flowers? He might as well start wearing a shirt saying 'So Yeah, I May Be Totally Badass, But I Can Never Score With Guys And Also, I Am Not As Traditional As You Want Your Future Son in Law to Be'.

(Kind of lengthy to put on a shirt, now that he thought of it. Just as well, probably.)

Larry looked at the flowers a little more - or just _pretended_ to look at them a bit more; frak, they were only some flowers, three kubits at some street vendor's, and that only because the guy'd seen Sam's tats and figured that he'd brighten up his day some by overcharging some dirt-eater for some flowers.

Sam'd considered making an issue of it; anyone tried to pull that skor anywhere near Little Tauron, he'd know exactly what to do and where to head if things got a bit hot.

He hadn't been anywhere near Little Tauron, though. Also, he figured that showing up with some other guy's blood on him wouldn't really be sending the right signal to Larry.

A job was a job was a job, but there was more to Sam than a job. _That_ was the signal he wanted Larry to pick up on. Frak, any guy wanting to date Sam for his job was probably at least ten kinds too kinky for Sam - or a frakked up perv who should get either locked up or shot.

"Well," Larry said. "At least they weren't roses." His smile took some of the sting out of the words.

Sam cleared his throat. "My uh my brother and I, we'd only just gotten here. To Caprica, I mean."

Larry had been to Tauron, but he hadn't been born there. Hadn't fought in the war. He lived in Little Tauron; he'd gotten the basic tats that told people he was an adult, father dead, mother still alive, no siblings. _Kind of boring, huh?_ he'd asked the night of their fourth date, when Sam had finally gotten his shirt off, barely believing his luck in getting that far.

 _Not at all,_ Sam'd said. _Should be more people with that kind of story._

(He'd meant it, too. Exciting was overrated.)

"First time, huh?" Larry said. There were no flowers on Tauron. Didn't mean there was no beauty. _Did_ mean there was a whole lot of dirt, most of it blood-soaked and hard-won.

"There was this whole field of them. Wildflowers, like these." The color was what had drawn Sam's eye. He'd been out for a bit of recon - no job, not yet, but there might be one coming up, and when the guatrau called, Sam liked to be ready.

Nobody'd ever gotten frakked by being prepared.

Larry nodded. Sam could tell he was doing it mostly to be polite. You couldn't explain these kinds of things to people who hadn't been there, was the problem. You could describe it; you could share your deepest, most intimate thoughts and feelings, but it was like describing music to a deaf man - or thirst to a fish, maybe.

"My brother, he looked out of the window of this car they'd put us in, and he wept."

Yoseef would not be pleased to hear about Sam sharing this memory with someone who wasn't family. (Yet, anyway; Sam wasn't going to frak this up by moving too fast, but he was in this thing for the long haul, not for a couple of weeks of fun and a promise to meet up again 'someday'.)

"Huh," Larry said. "And that were these flowers?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "I went back in time and got 'em for you, smart guy."

Larry grinned. "I thought _I_ was the smart guy in this relationship."

"I thought it'd be nice to change things up every now and then." Mostly, Sam supposed, he wanted to, well, make things a little more personal. To test the waters a bit, see if Larry maybe had some stories he wanted to share.

Sam wasn't going to be blowing Larry off if the answer to 'would you like this to get a little more serious?' was a firm but polite 'no, thank you', but at this point, he felt it would be okay to _ask_.

"Does that mean I have to go and beat someone up after dinner?"

"You don't beat people up after dinner," Sam said. Larry was only fooling around, he knew. Still, some stuff, it was better to know. Just in case you ever needed to. "You beat people up, you do it on an empty stomach. _After_ , you go and have dinner."

"Right. I'll keep that in mind." Larry's expression was the tiniest bit uncomfortable.

 _Frak. Me and my frakking mouth._ True, it wasn't exactly a secret what Sam did. Wasn't much point in being sent 'round to remind people of what was good for them if they didn't know who you were, and who you were working for.

Sure, you could simply walk in and throw someone's windows in, but most of the time, the _threat_ of violence worked exactly as well as the real thing - _without_ any property damage or hurt feelings or physical injuries or hard-to-remove stains.

"It's a job, Larry," Sam said. "More precisely, it's _my_ job."

Larry considered. "It's not a very nice job."

Sam shrugged. He could say that it was a job he was good at, a job that made him a well-respected member of the community. A job that put a roof over his head, food on the table, and money in the bank. He could say that he wouldn't be averse to finding a new one, in time.

He didn't. "Then maybe I'm not a very nice fellow."

"No." Larry shook his head. "That's what I can't quite get my head around, you know. You've got this smoking hot body, and you're really a nice guy, and then you're also, well, _that_. And I respect that, don't get me wrong, I do."

" 'Smoking hot body,' huh? Care to elaborate on that part?"

"Not right now, no." Larry actually blushed a little. Sam didn't think that any of his previous dates had ever _blushed_. Not without Sam making far more of an effort, anyway.

"Later works for me, too," Sam said. "Means there's going to be one, right? You and me?"

"I'm a little confused. That doesn't mean I'm crazy," Larry said. "Or actually, I'm a lot confused, especially about these." He held up the flowers.

"I told you: they reminded me of when me and my brother first got here."

"Yeah." Larry grimaced. "And your brother started crying. Which is not something a manly man from Tauron is supposed to do. So my question is, is this your way of trying to warn me? Are you going to be introducing me to your brother one day and is he just, I don't know, going to start crying? Is it the color of my eyes? My shirt? What?"

"Frak's sake, it's not about the crying." _Should have stuck with tradition. Nothing wrong with showing up for a date bearing some nice veggies for dinner, or a bottle of booze._ "It's about the emotion. The deeper meaning. Fresh hope, new beginnings, that sort of frakking thing."

Larry blinked. "Oh. Huh."

Sam swallowed his next angry comment. Larry _was_ a smart guy. So he'd listened to Sam's story and taken it the completely wrong way. That didn't mean - "Are you yanking me around?"

"I felt a sudden need to confirm my superior intelligence after you got me to confess I lust after your body. Sorry." Larry sounded half-apologetic and half-smug.

Both were probably justified. "Ugh. I had to go and fall for some guy who's smart _and_ insecure."

"Only sometimes," Larry said. "See, I'm over it already. Anyway, just so you know, on our next date, I'll be bringing you some home-made ath-ma-loi. Old family recipe. They will mean that I deeply love and respect you, even if you can't take a compliment and hog the blankets whenever we spend the night in the same bed."

Sam frowned. "I didn't know you baked."

"I am a man of infinite mystery," Larry said. "Also, if I burn down my apartment in an unfortunate, completely unforeseeable kitchen accident, could I stay over at your place for a couple of weeks?"


End file.
